The last thing Fish saw before blackness was a blue and slate thundercloud shaped like a beautiful mountain, a bolt ripping through it, and then Bread’s dad stretched prone, his poncho and boots waving skyward, his arms clasped to Fish’s arms, that dreadful eye wild and startled, flying like a beautiful bird.
Seventeen
TIFFANY HURLED HER PADDLE INTO THE DARKNESS. “THERE!” SHE said, folding her arms before the paddle even hit the water. “Maybe that will make it easier for you.”
Cal’s jaw dropped as he watched the paddle dart off into the rain. Now what’s this about? Cal realized how little he knew this woman, how much of a stranger she was. It was an odd realization. During the countless hours of sitting horseback and staring at stars and wading through brambles, he’d imagined himself married to her, and all the way through their honeymoon, their first house with a dock, their third or fourth child. But now he remembered he hadn’t so much as asked her on a date. He only knew where she lived and worked because he was a sheriff living in a very small town. And now she’d thrown one of their two paddles into the darkness.
“Tiffany—what on earth, woman!” He knew it was a mistake when it came out of his mouth.
“Woman? Woman!” she retorted, astonished. “I am not going to sit up here—man—and listen to you tell me how to paddle anymore.” She mocked his voice—Tiff, left side. No, right side. No, left. “I paddled this canoe through a tornado, Cal, and a rapids. Nearly eighty miles of river. And all of it went pretty smooth until you pretended to take over!”
Her tone was dark as river water. Cal reeled.
“Tiff, you never said you wanted to steer. And the person in the back does the steering. And I’m in the back.”
“I know who does the steering! And it sure isn’t you! Back and forth. Back and forth. I’ve never been so seasick.”
Cal paused, thought a moment. “What is wrong with you? Is this really about steering? You can steer, okay? You steer.”
“Oh, please,” she said, which made Cal drop his jaw at the night sky. He bit his knuckle.
It was raining hard again. Thunder rumbled around them. They’d made good distance, or at least Cal thought they’d made good distance. It was hard to tell. For the past half hour, Cal had been looking in earnest for the buoys and gorge. The river narrowed to one channel again, and the pines and cedars grew thick amid rock outcroppings. The lightning was such that finding the buoys should be easy enough, if they could focus for a moment. Why was Tiff like this? First the silence, then this anger, and for what? Cal was no boatman, but he knew his steering was not as bad as Tiffany claimed.
So he tried again. “No, really, you can steer. We’ll spin around. I’m glad to let you have the rudder.” Cal turned the canoe with a few drawstrokes, but Tiffany just sat in the bow with her arms crossed, facing upstream.
“I don’t have a paddle, Cal.”
“Well.” He paused, careful now of his next words. He was playing with fire here, and he knew it. “You can have mine.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? A woman paddling you around while you lounge in the bow and play captain. I watched your dog for you, Cal. How could you?”
Cal froze. He remembered once getting a call to a backyard in Houston where a pit bull was tangled in a neighbor’s garden hose. It snarled whenever he moved. He didn’t know how to approach it.
“How could I what?” he asked, in as monotone a voice as he could muster.
Tiffany growled and beat her fist on the gunwale. “You just paddle this canoe! Do you understand? Just get us downriver!”
Cal dipped his paddle experimentally in the water, turned the boat again. They floated around a left-hand bend where the river widened. Cal made out what looked to be a slough leading off to the left of a rocky peninsula, and a few rock outcroppings to the right. A vertical rock face rose from the peninsula and seemed to indicate the main channel. He applied enough pressure to the paddle to nose toward it. No island yet. No buoys. He was tired of this river, this rain. He wanted his warm truck and his dog and a cup of coffee. Maybe a stiff drink. He shook his head at the thought. No drink. That’s going away, along with this badge. And as long as he was shedding old comforts, he decided his daydreams about Tiffany might as well go too. She wasn’t for him. He wasn’t for her. No use pretending anymore.
“We’d go faster if we had two paddles,” he said.
Tiffany spun in her seat and nearly capsized the canoe. She stared him down in the lightning flashes. She was so beautiful, so exasperating.
“Don’t you mock me, Sheriff. Don’t you dare mock me!”
“I’m not mocking you. I just don’t understand why you tossed your paddle. I wasn’t bossing you.”
“Bossing me? Bossing me. Do you think I threw my paddle because you were bossing me, Sheriff?”
Cal let his eyes glare back. “That’s what you said!”
“I did not say that, and you know it, Sheriff.”
Thunder bellowed overhead.
“You said I was telling you how to paddle, and you were seasick, and then you whipped your paddle off into the night, Tiff. And I told you before to stop calling me Sheriff!”
“I said your steering made me seasick, not your bossing, Sheriff. There’s a difference.”
“What the hell are we even talking about?” Cal beat the gunwales with his paddle more loudly than he hoped to. “And stop calling me Sheriff!”
The cliff face rose to their left, up to a high plateau covered in cedar. The current seemed to quicken.
“We are talking,” said Tiffany, “about you and your different life.” She lifted her hands from the gunwales
